Meeting Minutes: January 2016

The 211th meeting of the National Advisory Dental and Craniofacial Research Council (NADCRC) was convened on January 22, 2016, at 10:00 a.m., in Building 31, Conference Room 10, National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland, and by teleconference. The meeting was closed to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. for Council business and consideration of grant applications, which was followed by a teleconference session open to the public from 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Dr. Martha Somerman presided as Chair.

The closed session portion of the meeting was closed to the public in accordance with the determination that it was concerned with matters exempt from mandatory disclosure under Sections 552b(c)(4) and 552b(c)(6), Title 5, U.S. Code and Section 10(d) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. Appendix 2).

REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS

The Council considered 479 applications requesting $121,391,506 in total costs. The Council recommended 304 applications for a total cost of $80,010,272.

II. OPEN SESSION

Dr. Martha Somerman, D

irector, NIDCR, called the 211th meeting of the Council to order. She welcomed Council members and guests, all participating by teleconference because of an impending blizzard.

II. FUTURE MEETING DATES

May 24, 2016

September 20, 2016

January 24, 2017

May 23, 2017

September 15, 2017

III. CONCEPT CLEARANCES

Dr. Dombroski noted that the NIDCR is required to present to the Council the scope, purpose, and objectives of staff-developed concepts for NIDCR initiatives and to give the public an opportunity to provide comment. The NIDCR staff presented two concepts for the Council’s review. Two members of Council led the discussion of each concept.

Dr. Lynn King, chief of the RTCDB, DEA, presented a concept to develop a pipeline of qualified investigators conducting research in translational science who can advance dental, oral, and craniofacial research. The initiative will leverage research training resources and expertise at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) hubs. The goal is to increase the NIDCR research workforce and advance dental, oral, and craniofacial research in areas requiring disparate disciplines to come together to diagnose, discover, and disseminate research findings, drugs, and interventions to the public expeditiously. The initiative will co-fund administrative supplements to the CTSA KL2 Mentored Career Development program, which offers formal research training experiences for postdoctoral scholars. The KL2 appointment would provide an additional pathway for scholars pursuing dental, oral and craniofacial research to learn about the core knowledge, skills, and collaborative techniques needed to advance one’s research and impact human health. Clinical investigators (i.e.-dentists, physicians) and PhD investigators would obtain a rigorous translational science education, research training, and career guidance leveraging the infrastructure support, curriculum, and mentorship expertise of the CTSA program.

The Council’s lead discussants, Drs. Anne Louise Oaklander and Jane Weintraub, enthusiastically supported the concept. Dr. Oaklander strongly supported this concept noting that she is a strong supporter of the K award system for developing clinicians into clinical researchers, and that the concept is in line with the goals of both the CTSA and NIDCR. She felt that it is a strength that each institution can select its own scholars, and that the concept addresses issues raised in the 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine on how to leverage the CTSAs more effectively. She recommended providing a networking framework to both mentors and mentees from NIDCR. Dr. Weintraub commented that she is highly in favor of the concept and believes it is an efficient way to approach the goal of increasing the translational science workforce in oral health research. She also recommended the development of a mechanism to create peer cohorts for support and interaction, and to accommodate additional mentors with relevant oral health experience to augment translational expertise in areas specific to dental, oral, and craniofacial research.\

The Council unanimously approved the concept.

Implementation Science and Oral Health

Dr. David Clark, Program Director in the BSSRB, DER, presented a concept to encourage studies aimed at reducing the time between establishment of the evidence base of interventions and widespread uptake and adoption. Implementation science is focused on identifying, understanding, and overcoming barriers to the adoption, adaptation, integration, scale-up and sustainability of evidence-based interventions, tools, policies, and guidelines. This initiative will develop implementation strategies tailored for use in dental care and oral health settings. This initiative also provides an opportunity to build the dental/oral/craniofacial implementation science workforce. Some examples of evidence-based interventions in dental practice include: placement of sealants; Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for tobacco and alcohol use; and rubber dam usage. Additionally, there is benefit in understanding the need to “de-implement” or reduce the use of strategies and procedures that are no longer supported by the evidence, but have been prematurely widely adopted, or are potentially harmful. Understanding the pipeline from development of the evidence base to implementation will improve the quality of dental care provided.

The Council’s lead discussants, Drs. Hector Balcazar and Benjamin Alexander White, Jr., enthusiastically supported the concept. Dr. Balcazar was very supportive of the theme as an important development that will expand and complement efforts to build more translational and health disparities research within NIDCR. He emphasized that the research should be described as a multidimensional and multifactorial science and as such requires multidisciplinary efforts, and should be developed in such a way to allow multiple research and transformative methods of discovery of implementation science and it multiple dimensions and factors. Dr. White agreed with Dr. Balcazar’s comments, fully supporting the concept.

The Council unanimously approved the concept.

IV. ADJOURNMENT OF OPEN SESSION

Dr. Somerman adjourned the open session of the Council meeting at 12:56 p.m.

CERTIFICATION

I hereby certify that the foregoing minutes are accurate and complete.